Girl On Fire

photography by Kelly Moore Clark | article by April Clark Honaker
hair by Lesley Boyd at the Parlor House | Makeup by Brittany Dye

Children are dreamers, and we often encourage them to dream big. We tell them, “You can be anything you want to be,” and we watch as they take in the world, find inspiring role models, and begin dreaming themselves into those roles. Maybe they’ll save lives, write books, discover a new species, or become famous. If they don’t give up and the world doesn’t get in their way, their dreams often become reality.

Fashion designer and Project Runway star Lela Orr has watched her childhood dreams come true. Born in Dallas, Lela spent her formative years in Monroe, and as a child, her earliest inspiration came from her grandmother. “She was a very fabulous, fashionable, glamourous woman,” Lela said. When Lela was just 5 or 6, her grandmother shared her collection of international Vogue magazines with her. Flipping through the pages, Lela was struck by the difference between the clothes she saw there and the ones she saw on the racks at the mall. “Through her and through seeing Vogue,” Lela said, “I realized, ‘Oh, wow! Fashion is an art form! And I wanna make that. I wanna make that art.’”

Looking through the magazines and watching her grandmother get dressed up sparked Lela’s interest in fashion, but she was also inspired by watching her mom get ready for parties in the early 90s. “She would go from feeling okay to putting on her beaded, glamorous cocktail dress with the big shoulders to feeling ultra-glamorous. She just felt so transformed by fashion.” It was inspiring for Lela to see fashion have such an impact on someone’s persona and on their day.

As Lela grew, she challenged herself creatively. She was the kind of kid who stayed up coloring or drawing at the dining table until her parents finally made her go to bed. Later, in high school, she found ways to surround herself with fashion. She worked at an upscale boutique called Signatures by Linda Reeves on Forsythe Avenue in Monroe. The shop catered to women of all ages and carried everything from business suits to ball gowns. Working there allowed Lela to watch women transform themselves with fashion every day.

During that time, Lela also started experimenting with design. “I would cut up skirts and make new skirts out of them,” she said, “or take old jeans and turn them into other things and sew patches onto things to make them different, but I thought it was just something that I was doing. I didn’t realize I was designing.” Even though Lela was always interested in fashion and design, there was a time when she lost sight of the little girl who imagined herself creating the clothes she saw in her grandmother’s fashion magazines.

“It was an occupation that I saw as really unattainable,” she said, “just because I didn’t really see anyone around me pursuing something like that.” Looking around Monroe, Lela didn’t often see women who wore the kind of clothing she saw in Vogue. There were no schools for fashion designers nearby, and high-end designers were not part of the peoplescape.

After high school, Lela moved to New Orleans where she earned her bachelor’s degree in business and international development. It wasn’t until she graduated and moved to New York that she realized being a fashion designer was her true calling. Initially, she was a sales associate for an accessory manufacturer, but eventually she was able to work with their in-house design team. She also saw everyone in New York pursuing their dreams, and she passed Parsons School of Design on her walk to work every day. One day, she said, “I was like, ‘What am I doing? I’m here in New York. I’m in the city of my dreams. Why don’t I just pursue my dreams?’” She finally realized the worst that could happen was rejection, so she applied.

Up to that point, she hadn’t believed being a designer was a realistic option. “I always wanted to do it,” she said. “It was a childhood dream of mine, but in life, I think we can just put those things aside and chalk it up to being childhood dreams. Honestly, I tell people all the time, I think I was the one standing in the way of myself.” Her family was always supportive, so she had to overcome her own doubts. Fortunately, when she finally applied, Parsons recognized her talent and accepted her into the fashion design program with a partial scholarship.

During an internship while studying there, she worked for an emerging brand called HARBISON. Because Charles Harbison, the brand’s founder, was just getting started, he needed an intern that could help in every facet of the business. The two of them shared responsibility for everything from emailing buyers to hand-sewing things on garments. Lela said, “I really got to see what it took to start a fashion business, so I think that’s why I started my business right of school—because I worked with him and he was just so supportive and encouraging.”

While she was still in school and working on her thesis project, Lela was already thinking about launching her own brand. She wanted to create a collection while all the inspiration was still fresh, and she wanted to practice some of the new techniques she was learning like zero-waste pattern cutting. In the research and planning process, she learned that on average only about 20-40% of the fabric that is purchased to make a garment is actually used. The thought of throwing away 60% of the fabric made Lela want to cry. She wanted to solve that problem. “My thesis was all about making things that are glamorous and beautiful and high-fashion, but also not throwing anything out,” she said. “I didn’t even realize it at the time, but I was being a zero-waste designer.” When her thesis was finished, she had created a zero-waste, luxury collection.

Creating a zero-waste collection was important to Lela because of how she was raised. She called her mom “the original hippie” and said, “We’ve always been into conservation and doing what’s best for your body and the environment, but I think also, when I was really young, my family didn’t have a lot. This was the early days when we were living in the suburbs of Dallas. My family really struggled.” They would reuse everything. They were resourceful. They cleaned their plates, and they wore things until they couldn’t be worn anymore. Then they patched them. “We just made things last as long as possible,” she said. “I thought that’s how everyone lived, and honestly, it’s how everyone really should live because it’s so much cleaner that way.”

Even when her family started doing well, they continued to be resourceful and conscious, so when Lela learned that the forward-thinking, progressive industry she loved was wasteful, she felt driven to do something about it. “It’s an easy problem to fix,” she said. “It’s so easy to lay out your patterns a little bit more thoughtfully, so that you’re wasting less. It’s easy to recycle in New York, and it’s easy to educate yourself, but it’s just taking those steps to educate yourself to learn what you can do to be better—just a better person honestly—that I think can really make a big difference.” According to Lela, microplastics are responsible for 30% of the plastic in our oceans, and every time we wash a synthetic garment, we release some of those plastics into our water supply. It’s a big problem, but Lela believes even one person can make a difference and even the smallest change helps. For her, change meant applying zero-waste pattern cutting and using only natural materials in her thesis collection.

When she finished the collection, she was ready to introduce it to the world. Because she felt New York was already overflowing with talented, new designers, she decided to head south. “I went to Dallas, back to my roots,” she said. At her very first show there, which was at Fashion X, she got orders. With people responding to her work, Lela was inspired. She decided to move back to Dallas and start her own eco-luxury brand. She chose to name her brand Ferrah because in Arabic it means joy. She said, “To me that’s the most important element of designing—keeping that in mind and thinking of the transformative impact that clothes can have on your persona—and my goal is to bring people joy when I create.” The next year, 2016, she officially launched her brand and won “Designer of the Year” at Fashion X. The sponsorship and mentorship she was awarded as part of her win were instrumental in helping her grow Ferrah.

During the months that followed, she started really carving out her niche and figuring out how she was going to define and market herself. She started branding herself as an American-made, zero-waste, high-fashion, eco-luxury brand with a low carbon footprint. She also committed to using all-natural fabrics and dyes. These things along with ethical craftsmanship and being environmentally friendly, are now hallmarks of her brand.
Another important development during this time was that Lela joined forces with fellow designer Lea Nyland Poulsen. The two met after Lela’s second Fashion X show. Lea had been to the show and emailed Lela afterward expressing her love for the collection and how much she’d like to work for her. Lela reviewed her portfolio and résumé and said, “I was so baffled that someone with her skill set was wanting to work for me, an emerging designer in Dallas.” But she was interested in learning why, so they met for coffee where Lela learned that Lea was working as a head designer for Zara. “She was this amazing designer with this incredible portfolio and an incredible thesis collection that honestly reminded me a lot of my own thesis collection,” Lela said. She was impressed but still wanted to know how a designer from Denmark who had graduated from fashion school in Barcelona and had worked in Spain ended up in Dallas. During their meeting, she learned that Lea had moved to Dallas for love.

The move seemed fortuitous to Lela, but she wanted to create a test collection with Lea to see how they worked together before becoming partners. She had collaborated with other designers before and knew it could be difficult, but she and Lea meshed well. “It was just this easy partnership,” she said. “It was so kismet and so cool and really, really rare and special.” The two have been working together now since 2016.

For their first collection together, they were inspired by women’s movements around the world, particularly in India. “I became really moved learning about the Gulabi Gang in India,” Lela said, “and that was something that was just really life impactful for me where I kind of felt like there’s no way that I can just ignore what’s happening right now, and the things that I’m learning about I have to express, and I have to do something.” She learned about the Gulabi Gang while she and Lea were sketching together and watching news about the Women’s March. According to Lela, the Gulabi Gang is a network of women in India who wear pink sarees and fight corruption and abuse against women.

Inspiration from that sketching session came through in the collection’s saree drapes, long trains, and flowing cape-like elements suggestive of superheroes. “It was all about female empowerment because of the Women’s March and so many amazing women’s movements happening around the world,” Lela said. “So that was something that was sociopolitical—so large and so important—that I wanted to put into my fashion career.”

Ferrah’s most recent collection, number V, is equally meaningful. It was initially inspired by clouds and a desire to create something light, airy, and voluminous. But as Lela and Lea’s plans evolved, they focused more on creating pieces inspired by their different backgrounds and heritage. Lea is from Scandinavia, and Lela was born in Dallas, so they named the collection Scandiwest. As part of their creative process, they flipped through family albums together. “We were looking at what would be considered a family heirloom,” Lela said, “and how we could inject that into our collection.” For Lela, it’s been great having someone to share ideas with. “It’s really helpful not being in an echo chamber and not working alone anymore,” she said. “I have a business partner, so we have these life talks. We’ll just sit down to have coffee, and we’ll end up talking about all of this stuff happening in the world.” They talk about everything from religion to politics to the shape of clouds, and these talks then inspire their work.

At the same time, Lela said, “People are the most inspiring thing to me.” She likes to travel and people watch, but she often finds herself drawn to the unexpected. “Being at Paris Fashion Week, I was seeing all this beautiful fashion coming down the runway,” she said. “But then I found myself on the Metro and looking at this guy and the way that he cuffed his shirt and his pants and the attention to detail that he paid to what was probably a work uniform. The attention to detail that he had in his garment to me was more inspiring than some of the things I saw coming down the runway.” Lela appreciates street style and people being confident in themselves and having a personal style.

She also believes her customers are craving something different, and as a brand, Ferrah responds to that craving. Over time, she and Lea have grown more fearless and experimental in their designs, and with their latest collection, they’ve seen that the designs they put the most of themselves into have been the most well-received. That experience has been really encouraging. In fact, one of the most important lessons Lela said she’s learned as a designer is to go with her gut and trust her intuition, whether it’s in the design process or in her business decisions.

Being on Project Runway has also led to some valuable lessons. “I think the show really encouraged me to be even more fearless and bold,” she said, “to not question who I am.” Lela doesn’t over edit herself anymore. “I really go for it,” she said, “and I feel confident in my customer that they’ll follow along.” The show really pushed her to not only sew faster but also to embrace her identity as a designer. It was difficult being a zero-waste designer in the context of the competition, but she said, “I learned to stay true to who I am.” Working alongside 15 other extremely talented but very different designers and receiving advice from Christian Siriano and the judges was also inspiring. “Their advice and the experience as a whole has really shown me that I should push my aesthetic even more,” she said, “and just be really confident in myself and where my brand is going.”